The Life of a Pacific Salmon

Positives

• This lesson can be taught after or during a salmon or fish unit.

• This lesson provides opportunities for social-emotional check-ins so that students can recognize and understand their feelings as they learn about salmon and human-caused and climate-related problems.

• Students have multiple opportunities to work effectively with partners or small groups.

• Students feel empowered as they learn how to protect salmon and waterways and educate others about the importance of habitat protection and climate action.

• Students have opportunities to practice oral speaking skills.

Additional Prerequisites

• Students should be familiar with the salmon life cycle. The following resources can help students who are unfamiliar with the topic:

  • Infographic: Life Cycle of the Pacific Salmon
  • WWy-Kan-ush-pum Salmon People Activity Book
  • WWF Pacific Salmon

• This lesson can be connected to the following lessons from the Oregon Department of Education:

  • SB-13 Tribal History Shared History Oral Storytelling
  • Native American Legends and Stories of Geologic History in Oregon
  • ODE Science: Salmon and the River Lesson Plan

• Teacher will need to gather the following items:

• Copies of Student Documents (document can also be shared digitally)

• Salmon resources or stories used in the unit of study

• Copies of Story Spine cards (optional)

• Recording tools

• Chart paper or whiteboard space

Differentiation

• Students can work on their stream story in mixed-ability groups, pairs, or individually.

• The oral response activity in the Inspire section can be tailored to suit students’ needs. For example, stronger speakers can be tasked with including three or more details in their responses.

• Teachers can change how students share their oral responses or require that students share their responses in more than one way (e.g., watershed council, social media post, newspaper article, etc.).

• Extension opportunities include having students tell their stories to younger student buddies, write their stories down, or draw pictures to go with the stories.

• Stories could be turned into a story album to be shared as a collection.

• Teachers can sign up for a free educator account on VoiceThread, a storytelling tool for the classroom.
  

The relationship between people, salmon, and climate change is examined in this lesson. Students are given the opportunity to learn about salmon, their life cycle, the effects of climate change on salmon, and how humans have contributed to salmon overfishing. Additionally, the lesson teaches students basic storytelling strategies so they may write and share their own narratives about how they feel about the catastrophic effects of climate change on salmon populations and how to safeguard salmon species in their ecosystems. After thoroughly fact-checking all the information, this lesson passed our review in terms of science.

Note On Standards:

This lesson is aligned to Oregon standards. Review the aligned standards directly in the lesson plan document and teacher slideshow.